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CU scholars eye the next frontier of Renaissance literary criticism

The disappearing bison of the 19^th century appear far, far removed from Hamlet, prince of Denmark. But Heather James sees a connection, and it is a variation on a theme of extinction.

For James, an American painting of stampeding bison may help explain a line from “Hamlet” that has long puzzled her. “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” Hamlet says shortly before striding into the fight that will slay him.

James, an associate professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Southern California, joined a day-long symposium at the University of Colorado in late September. Its title was “The Next English Renaissance: New Directions in Early Modern Literary Criticism.”

Katherine Eggert, CU associate professor of English, is one of three English faculty members who planned the symposium, which brought five up-and-coming scholars to CU to discuss their “game-changing” analysis and criticism. David Glimp, CU associate professor of English, and Richelle Munkhoff, assistant professor of English, worked with Eggert to organize the symposium.

The idea, Eggert noted, was to highlight how the study of Renaissance literature is changing. Additionally, the symposium helped “showcase our campus’ tremendous strengths in the study of the Renaissance.”

Eggert explained the shifting direction of Renaissance literary criticism this way: For two decades, the study of English literature has dwelled on the work’s historical context.

“You might think about Hamlet in terms of how the Renaissance viewed the afterlife” or the meaning of the flowers Ophelia distributes, Eggert said. In Shakespeare’s day, some of those flowers were viewed as medicinal.

Such analysis has been wonderful, Eggert noted. “But we’ve been doing this for 20 years or so, and now is the time to say, ‘Where are we going next?’”

As Eggert put it, Renaissance-literature scholars are increasingly incorporating the study of philosophy, history and the rest of the humanities, finding new ways to ponder the central question in the humanities: “What does it mean to be human?”

“People want to find meaning in literature again,” she added. Expanding the scope of literary analysis and criticism—and employing an explosion of newly digitized and universally accessible Renaissance works previously unavailable to most scholars—paved the way.

Enter Hamlet and bison, stage left.

James noted that her current research has plunged her into the art and culture of the American West of the 1860s. “I don’t belong here. I rode in on Shakespeare,” she quipped.

Nonetheless, her study of the early American West gave her new insight into the horse she rode in on. One fresh perspective came from a painter named William Jacob Hays, who meditated on the extinction of species as he traveled across the West in the 1860s, painting bison and other animals and plants.

One work, titled “Herd on the Move,” depicts what initially appears as a pastoral scene: a huge herd of bison running across the plains. But, as James observed, the painting’s perspective is right in front of the charging animals. They look angry. From where the viewer stands, there is no escape.

The bison at the front of the herd are flanking left and right, making any salvation impossible. Further, a bison at the front of the herd is running toward—and glaring at—a bison skull on the ground.

The bison “seems to know something we don’t,” James said. “He seems to know in an instant that the skull means death not only for him but for all of us.”

But what is Hays to Hamlet, and what is Hamlet to Hays? Further, James asked, “Can a painting of bison by a minor painter of the American West influence our view of one of the most significant plays in the West?”

Her answer is “yes,” and to buttress her case, she cited and article written by Hays and published in a journal called The American Naturalist in 1871. His essay, titled “Notes on the Range of Some of the Animals in America at the Time of the Arrival of the White Men,” argued that few of people considered the “prodigious changes that have taken place in the animal life in the comparatively short time since the discovery of the country.”

Later in the essay, Hays underscored the point: “At the rate at which (bison) have been driven back and destroyed, it is probable that they will soon to be known only to history.”

Hays’ article, addressed to East Coast naturalists, explains the painter’s view of the subject of his art. Further, James said, it explains why the bison glower at the viewer of the painting with a single, accusing look. “We, the viewers, are the face of their death.”

Meanwhile, the skull in the painting, with its gaping sockets that once held eyes, looks at humans as perpetrators. “We don’t see ourselves this way, so Hays takes us back and emphasizes our consequences to the environment,” James said.

In the case of Hamlet, seeing a human skull generates a similar sequence of thoughts. The skull, Hamlet learns, is that of Yorick, a “fellow of infinite jest” whom Hamlet knew as a child.

After exclaiming, “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him,” Hamlet ponders the fate of Yorick and observes that if that once-vivacious man could be transformed into an inert skull, so can the bones of Alexander the Great. The dusty remains of imperious Caesar, he notes, might stop a hole to keep the wind away.

Viewing this scene from “Hamlet” through the lens of Hays and his “bison Hamlet” prompts a question: What if human existence is one species replacement after another ending in extinction for all?

“I like this view,” James said. It helps explain a line of Hamlet’s that some find hard to interpret: “There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” In this view, “Hamlet” could be noting, in part, a juggernaut of ecosystem destruction.

Such an interpretation is unusual because, “We’ve been busy thinking of the Renaissance as not apocalyptic.”

Similarly, four other scholars offered fresh analyses of Renaissance literature. They were , associate professor of English at the University of Delaware, who spoke on “Renaissance/Post-human”; and , associate professor of English at Rutgers University who spoke on “Richard Hakluyt’s Polyglot Humanism.”

Also appearing were , associate professor of English at the University of California at Riverside, whose presentation was titled, “‘Not a word, sir’: Gesture and Signing in Early Modern England”; and , associate professor of English at Ohio University, who discussed “Wanting to Want to Repent in Tudor Despair Literature.”

During the symposium, William Kuskin, associate professor and chair of CU’s English department, echoed and amplified Eggert’s remarks about the “next English Renaissance.”

Kuskin said the well-worn patterns of literary criticism are changing for the better. “It is criticism’s job to return to the past and to speak it now in the present,” he said.

Today, amid the threats of budget cuts, withering criticism of universities on op-ed pages and the “ceaseless demands that we justify ourselves,” Kuskin said, it can’t be business as usual in academe.

“We need to sing poetics now and more readily,” Kuskin intoned. “And so I say onwards, into the Renaissance.”

Eggert noted that the study of Renaissance literature has long been a strength in the English department. The hiring of Glimp and Munkhoff, “who are extraordinary,” augments that strength, she added.

Along with a strong Renaissance faculty across the humanities and arts and “great library resources,” Eggert said, “We’re the best place to study Renaissance literature between Chicago and California. It’s kind of a secret at CU, and I wish it weren’t.”